Today’s lecture will be the third instalment of PRECA Holistic Therapy. As I have mentioned, this half-year series is not going be a simple breeze-through, and we will continually revise what we’ve covered, and hone some techniques.

Just like my signature style of narration, I will repeatedly mention certain key points and concepts, laying the ground for solid foundation.

We will revise what we’ve covered last Saturday’s offline session more in-depth, so don’t get nervous or frustrated if you can’t absorb everything.

The core concepts of the previous session is simple. PRECA holistic therapy is not distinctive in a sense that it is more powerful or more effective than conventional therapy. It is more about the fact that in contains elements of <learning>.

Most problems of emotion, personality and willpower cannot be completely treated just by attending to the internal problems. It is like having to investigate the patient’s personal situation like relationship, finance, job and other ‘environmental factors’ when counselling them.

If someone’s a fifteen year old without parents, bread-winning for their younger siblings,
solving their psychological distress without checking and addressing the physical environment is beyond nonsense.

Hence, holistic therapy of any problem cannot occur without resolving the two most critical factors of <how should we live>:
– How will I financially supporting myself.
– How will I meet and live with people.

I went through in-depth about it, outlining the societal changes and the global movements, during the previous lecture <Foretelling>. Do take a look sometime.

Today, it’s time to cover about the emotional pain. During the offline class, I emphasised several times that all of these converge into a single keyword. All inward problems you have are forms of <hurt>. Whatever they are, they are all ‘hurt’s.

So we’ve covered: first conclude that it is a form of emotional wound, and start listing the keywords and example situations to find out what kind of wound it is. Write, record, express in words and converse about it.

Then ask yourself if those are precisely the mind-stinging heart of the problem, and continue writing more keywords and situational examples of it, and keep refining those expressions into something more direct, heart-touching and detailed.

Almost all hurts that you are experiencing include at least one of these four domains. Sit or lie down in comfortable position, and close your eyes.

By muttering ‘Without hurting my feelings…’ inside, like you’re consoling and comforting yourself, you will raise the memories or imaginations that have hurt you, albeit small, even without trying.

Let’s say there’s a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst and 1 being the mildest. After beginning this training, you will realise that even those memories and imaginations that are close to being 1 will hurt you, and you will know it by that feeling of pain, however small it is.

Additionally, you will feel the defence mechanism working in your mind, the feeling of consolation. This is a form of training called ‘pain acceptance & defence’

Pain from emotional hurt cannot be mended by denying, forgetting or distorting the memories. It has to be accepted. To accept does not mean just logically realising that
such an incidence existed. It means not running away when the actual sensation of pain is invoked.

When we run away from it, we live in a meaningless immersion, preoccupying ourselves to forget about the pain. Sports, games, hobbies, the TV shows you were into; whatever they were, those could have been just objects of preoccupation to forget and deny the emotional hurt and pain.

That is why even when you’re eating, drinking, having fun without much drama, you still can’t shake off that strange sense of emptiness and vague feeling of anxiety. That is why you continue searching for more objects to immerse into, scrolling down social media, reading pages and surfing the web.

There is no ‘sense of self’ that does not involve pain. You have to be at least aware of yourself to get self-identity. Running away from pain will quickly dissipate the ‘sense of self’, leaving within you only what you want to be and what you want to believe yourself to be. You will continue attempting to erase the version of yourself that brings pain, so emptiness and anxiety will follow. It is like leaving the problems there and sleeping to forget about it.

Therefore, pain acceptance and defence is the key. First feel the pain, this will automatically improve your abilities to:
– endure the pain and
– ease the pain

These work to reduce the intensity of emotional pain. This sounds easy, but it’s easier said than done. If the ache could be endured that easily, things would not have gone this far.

Some of you may have already felt. When you mutter ‘you failure’, you will be met with the brunt of heart-stinging ache, mostly originating from the <gaze of condemnation>.

This is a hypothetical and imaginary gaze that we feel, from those who are around us, from the world, from those who are better than us and those whom we love. That alone brings bitterness, but it doesn’t end there. What follows is the association system in your brain generating those <inner chatter> that further torment you like non-stop recording tapes.

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I have deliberately transcribed the teachings of my teacher.

Editor’s Note:
The first off-line session was a 3-hour seminar held right before this, outlining the detailed instruction of PAD training, as well as some of the concepts that form that basis of the training. While access to the direct recording is restricted, I will go over the instruction separately another time.